September Song

When I was a kid in grade school
the teacher once made us repeat after her,
“The key to success is hard work.”
Years later, in college, another teacher told us,
“You have to work hard to get an A
and you have to work hard to get an F.”
One thing they never told you
was that sometimes you could make it
without any effort at all.
This you had to learn on your own.
And though it’s true
that most of the time
you have to slave away
to get anywhere,
the most beautiful moments
are those when you find yourself
in the right place at the right time,
or when, after doing something easy,
you find yourself suddenly
on top of the mountain.

It’s like when you’re at the racetrack
and you forget about the jockey,
the odds and past performance
and bet big on a horse
because you like its name,
and you go home with a hundred dollars
you didn’t have that morning.
It’s like wandering the streets aimlessly,
looking for nothing,
just walking like a zombie,
when you run into a friend
and end up drinking and laughing,
ready once again to look
at the world that surrounds you.

It’s the beauty of the moment
that comes alive without artifice,
the beauty of the mountain
that is built without industry
without business,
without blueprints and guidelines
and a right way
and a wrong way.

It’s the beauty of being human,
of not always making sense,
the beauty of falling and getting up
not because there are things to do,
but simply because you have fallen
too deeply into the realm of the possible,
and it’s time to do
what you were told
you couldn’t do
and you do it effortlessly
and easily high
and wide
and running on these
still golden days.

SHORT POEMS FOR THE LONG ROAD

Waking Up In Rock Springs, Wyoming

The store at the
old bus depot here
sells about
a hundred different
pornographic magazines,
and though the fat guy
behind the counter
smoking a cigar
seems friendly enough,
I can tell
this isn't the place
for me to hang
around.


Walking The Dog

I met a woman
from Tennessee
who licked my fingers
in the back of
a taxicab.
Her hair was blonde
and her lips were apple red.
We didn't look
and we didn't talk.
Sensing the steady rain outside,
her hips
couldn't keep still.
Neither
could
my free hand.


Square Biz

In the record store
one day this
girl with spiked black
hair picked up a copy
of Teena Marie's latest
and said, "God, she's
so ugly."
I walked over to her
and said, "Hey,
Teena Marie
is a
Fucking Genius.
And she's not ugly.
You are."
It was the only
pick up line
I could think of.


Other Afternoons

At the matinee
movie in Utah
the curly haired kid
taking tickets
stands stiff
and looks at me
like I'm some sort of
criminal.
I liked it better in
Atlanta, where they
checked my bags for
guns or knives
before letting me into
this gigantic
old movie palace
to see a bad horror
film starring
Oliver Reed.


California

The clear glass
ashtray's
on the floor
and the
Sunday morning mass for
shut-ins fills out the
dusty TV screen:
when I wake up
in the morning
I often feel
a sense
of loss.


LSD

The painted doves
on the corner
walls coo
softly in
a summer
space.


Ask Judd

Judd had a
head full of
bong hits.
He was sitting
straight and
tall in liquid filtered
slow motion.
When I asked him what
he wanted to do
when he got out of school
he said,
"Fly planes."


San Francisco

I don't know
why
I didn't
give the girl
with the gold
nosering
some
spare
change.


The Kamikaze Kid

At my 10 year
high school reunion
Carl Jackson
walks up and tells me
he dreamt
I was a Japanese torturer
in World War II.
Just then I remember
why we
didn’t speak much
in high school.


On the Road

Watching TV
in my hotel room
in downtown
New Orleans.
I'm by the freeway and
my room feels cold.
I'm
thinking
about
birds.


Poem

Get the money
Try to score
Grab the blanket
Meet the bus
Go to hell
Drive that truck
Talk that trash
Knead the bread
Dig the street
Buy the meat
Meryl Streep


The Dynamite Kid

Like a
perfect rainbow,
nothing can match
a flying
headbutt
for insight
into the lives of
the billion and one
maniacs
we call our
fellow
human
beings.


Speed

Driving down
the Verrazano Bridge
the Earth slows down
its colors
through its
very swiftness.
I close my eyes
and when I open
them again
I discover how
the thickness of the universe
feels.


81 St. Mark's Place

Ice ceam
in noisy glass
cups:
the TV's on
in the dark
and the phone
and doorbell keep
ringing.
We're
watching
cartoons.


My Own Like Poem

Leslie,
I like you.
I don't think you're
a jerk as
Michael does
why I even like
the way you eat
strawberries.

You interrupt the silence
the way Tahiti
interrupts the ocean.

Don't change

I'm going away for now
I'll be back soon

bye bye.

bye.

-Jose Padua

Pilgrim's Progress

I remember the old days,
when it took some effort
for me to insult people,
when I had to think
for a minute before
I could do or say
something offensive.

I used to be a nice guy,
I was always polite
in thought and act
and everyone loved me for it,
deemed me charming, chivalrous, suave.

Nowadays I fart a lot
and pick my nose at dinner.
I stare at people
with an ugly stare,
pick fights with the nicest people.
Every other word out of my mouth
is "fuck" or "bitch" or "asshole"
or "fuck you, you asshole bitch."

Still some people love me.
They know that with them
I'm joking when I say
they've got shit for eyeballs
and piss for blood.
They think my farts
are a quaint manifestation
of my grand eccentricity.

As for the rest of you,
I'm being truthful with my insults.
My manners towards you are atrocious
because I just don't care
for you.

But when you see me
glaring at some nun
as I piss on the sidewalk
in the late afternoon
or early evening
in the middle of a crowd of people
just getting off from work,
don't feel sorry for me
and don't hold your heads up high with disdain,
thinking there's something
wrong with me.

Just remember
that in a better world
I'd be a role model, a saint.
I'd be the guru with bloodshot eyes,
the oracle with a six pack
you turn to
in times of need
and in times of trouble,
the one who'll tell you
where you can go,
who you should fuck,
and where you can shove it.

And as you walk through the wilderness of this world
let my frank words and ways sustain you.
Let them be your bedlam and your vanity,
your guiding light and your exquisite confusion.

Because although you may end up
smelling just as bad as I do
you'll become truly refined,
truly wise,
and truly bright,
and this world will be a better place
because of it.

Portrait # 15 (for Stephen Ciacciarelli)

The first detective in a cast of thousands
doing time considering all the true masters.
Through the convergence of forces one creates the first
brownstone skyscrapers while subway trains diverge
and disappear completely in subterranean snowstorms.
You live by sounds and images. The East River
sends you messages you turn from pictures
into words and back again. The world runs us over into cover,
tears the eyelids from our eyes. You take it all in, standing
out in the open like a bridge, defying both gravity and friction,
the time which will always be lost.

Portrait #41

To stand forever in the middle, or be
part of the usual episodes of amnesia.
Time in the dark, I find stones to throw, like words
spoken in my sleep. You can’t be afraid of thunder,
though I, at times, fear for my public image.
It’s easy prey for change, not being safe or
secure in a world of falling water. Sterling
silver cups, journeys up or down the river.
The meaning still isn’t clear, though in the end
it doesn’t matter, chance being of stronger substance
than intention, and swimming a way of life.

Portrait #26

This is for the space between words, the slow fall of mountains
leaving the remains of giants. There are wars we remember
that took place in our back yards, days when we thought
we moved backwards. The storyline has only been suggested,
through hints of color, and weather mentioned in passing.
Connections are left unclear, as in dreams you forget,
and people whose faces you can’t see but whose breath
you can hear and almost feel. The wind used to take
its time in coming, used to hide only to catch us unawares,
keeping the doors shut tight in uneasy sleep. The symphony
it brings rises slowly to an epic pitch, and falls, without shattering.

World War III Will Start in the Minds of the Deprived and in the Hearts of the Depraved

lost in an ocean of shit
I'd gotten myself
in a discussion
of Fascism
with an ex-Army man
from Chicago at this bar.
He didn't like the way
the word got tossed around,
having something specific in mind.
I was trying
to throw the meaning everywhere,
from politics and law
on down to the Oriental practice of foot binding
and the excessive use of make up
by women who aren't hookers.
All the time my eyes were
on the barmaid's hips which
were squeezed into these tight black
spandex pants.

I knew I was too drunk
to be talking about anything
and too drunk to be
thinking
about anything but sex.
I also knew I was
too drunk to do
anything reasonable about it,
so I paid,
gave the barmaid a nice tip,
said goodbye to
everyone and
left.

I got home,
walked upstairs,
and threw up
all over the books
on the floor of
my room.
There were some
good ones there,
some of which
I hadn't read yet.
I picked them up,
wiped them off
with a dirty tee shirt,
threw the shirt in the trash,
and went to sleep,
ready for nightmares
filled with Nazis
and no women,
all because
life is too short
to be spent
looking for
peace of mind.

- Jose Padua
------------------------------------------
Originally published in Big Cigars issue #1, 1986.

I’m in Love with Hustler Magazine’s Honey of the Month, March 1995

The way you spread your
pussy lips and lift
your right breast to
lick your nipple like
an autoerotic slut
makes me love you
that much more.
When a woman looks
as wet and hot as you
there's no need for
poise, elegance, class,
the ability to speak
seven languages fluently,
and an understanding of
the dynamic involved in the transition
from early Renaissance to Baroque art.
Next to you the subtle beauty
of a Vogue fashion model
looking off toward the horizons
of some distant city
as she takes a drag
from a Dunhill cigarette
becomes nothing but
a pretentious, flat-chested,
save the whales,
save the rain forest bore.

You're the woman I want,
the woman with beer, tobacco
and blow jobs on her breath;
the woman who's too
horny to care,
too drunk to make me use a condom,
and too sweaty to make me spoon with her
the rest of the night;
the woman who'll take me home,
fuck me, then ask me to leave
before I'm able to find both my socks;
the woman who doesn't need to hear
the words "I'll call you"
or "j'ai un grand crayon, Isabella"
and what's more doesn't want to.

You're the woman I want to marry,
the woman I want to bear
and raise my children,
the woman I want to grow
old and fat and bald with
in a fourth floor walkup
on First Avenue and Second in Manhattan;
the woman whose underwear
I want to see lying
on the floor in the morning
with a few pubic hairs
stuck in the waistband
and an odd looking stain
that I just can't resist from sniffing.

If you are coming down through
the narrows of the East River
past the Con Ed plant on FDR Drive,
please let me know beforehand,
and I will come out to meet you as far as
Avenue D and Tenth Street.
- Jose Padua
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally published in Pink Pages, #9, 1996.